Chuck vs Infinity
by trekaddict
Summary: Post S-5, naturally. After the beach, Sarah begins to to remember bits and pieces, but most importantly that she loves Chuck, is and wants to be his wife. They try to sort things out, but quickly, life intervenes. Rated T for the occasional naughty word, but nothing too bad.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: Of course this is a post-finale story. It's been several months since I saw the last half of Season 5 because of those few frustrating episodes, but just now I had the realization that those events likely were meant as a cliffhanger and Season 6 opener before the show was canned. I don't have the time to write a full season, but this story (of which I have no idea yet how long it's going to be) is how I think they may have dealt with the memory loss in a hypothetical Season 6. Bear in mind that I am a massive trekkie, so it may have influenced some decisions. The first scene is basically how I would imagine Season 6 to start.**

Also, this is un-betaed, since my usual one is unavailable for the next weeks. All mistakes are mine.

Disclaimer: If I owned them, there would have been the proper seven seasons.

Chuck vs Infinity

Chapter One

Chuck was freaking out. But to be fair, what man in his situation wouldn't? Sarah leaned back from him, and he could see on her face that she didn't remember everything, and he knew her well enough by now to be able to tell.

Yet at the same time the shy, hesitant smile on her beautiful face told him that there was... something, and that stopped him from...

"Chuck, don't freak out."

He grinned in response, trying hard not to feel too hopeful, and said: "So, how much..."

"How much do I remember?" Sarah asked, "something. I remember that you are familiar to me and that..."

She almost choked on what she wanted, no, needed to say next. "I...remember that I love you."

Chuck couldn't help his wide smile, in spite of the tears that began to run down her face.

"And..." she said, swallowing hard, "something about a broken phone."

He sighed, and decided that it could have been worse. That way at least they had something to work on.

"Let's go home. We can talk there." Chuck rose to his feet and offered her his hand. Sarah glanced at the wedding ring, remembering that she too owned one just like it, somewhere, before taking it and letting him pull her to his feet. It would be tough, it would take forever, but as he smiled at her and that smile caused a rush of affection and love, she knew that whatever her life had been like before Quinn, it was worth the effort she would have to put into finding out.

Chuck was about to let go of her hand, but when she instead held onto it and intertwined her fingers with his, he stopped walking up the beach and instead turned to stare at her. Neither of them said anything, but for the both of them it was a sign of hope.

They had barely turned onto the freeway when Sarah couldn't help but ask a question.

"Chuck?"

"Yes, dear wife of mine?"

She chuckled, knowing that he'd said that so that she would. After a few seconds she sobered up and asked her question, it being one that had crept up on her since they had left the beach.

"Why did you fall in love with me, Chuck?"

Insecurity about oneself was not something they taught you at the farm, and Sarah Wa—Bartowski was confident to the point of foolhardiness at times. Yet now that she could only remember who she had been five years ago and only feelings of the time in-between, and that together didn't make her comfortable. Chuck was a sweet man with a heart of gold the size of Mount Everest, and yet she knew that she had to have been cruel to him back then. So how and why did he fall in love with her?

Chuck meanwhile almost drove them into the concrete dividers on the side of the freeway, because that had been the last question he'd expected from his awesome, confident super-spy wife. 'But then,' he reminded himself, 'this isn't quite the woman I married.' In some of the worst ways imaginable, Sarah had been reset to where she'd been when she'd first walked into the Buy More, and he knew better than most people how she'd been back then. It saddened him, but at the same time he knew that he would love her however she felt, and the last thing he could do was to try and answer the question.

"This isn't a car conversation, Sarah." he replied, and both were quiet until they reached a service station. Chuck steered the Lotus to the curb near the first pumps and turned in his seat. "Now, how's about some Coffee?"

Normally that would have been accompanied by a smirk, but his tone of voice and the look on his face told her clearly that he was as aware of the seriousness of it as she was, and once more she was struck by how well her... her husband seemed to.. no, he did know her that well.

Which didn't exactly make her feel any better about it all. "I...I don't deserve you!" she blurted out, and once more Chuck was rendered silent by what she'd said.

She never saw him move, but suddenly he hugged her tight over the centre console of the car. "How on earth can you think that's true, Sarah?"

Sarah relaxed in his arms and the stiffness left her, but she said nothing. Chuck wondered how her mood had changed so quickly, from the cautious hope on the beach to...to this. Of course with what she'd gone through in the last few days would throw anyone off kilter. Even a person not given to mood swings was allowed to be so when he or she had the last five years deleted.

She snorted. "Oh come on. You can't tell me that someone like you, an open, kind person, would go for..well..." her voice broke, and Chuck's heart with it as he listened to her. He held her tighter and stroked the back of her head, giving her the power to continue, yet at the same time making her feel even worse.

"Like me." she ended the sentence. "A spy that's never been in one place for long, a cold-blooded killer, an..." she hesitated for a moment, fighting back a bad memory from the Farm, "an [I]Icequeen[/I]. For years I've seen people have it all, and I was standing outside and looking on. You changed that for me and I..."

Chuck said nothing for a moment, before pushing her back so that he could look her in the eyes. But instead Sarah looked away, staring at the dashboard. He placed both his hands on her cheeks, forcing her to look at him.

"Sarah, I've told you this before, and I will tell you again, and if it takes the rest of my days to convince you it will take that long. Sarah Walker, I love you, I will always love you for who you are, who you were and who you might be. All and everything of you."

A tiny, almost...shy smile appeared on her face, and she tentatively looked into his eyes. She said only one word: "Bartowski." she almost whispered.

"Huh?"

She smiled, broader this time. "My name is Sarah Bartowski. I don't remember how it got that way, but what I do remember is that it's the right thing and what I want to be."

Chuck brightened visibly at this, and smiled the crooked smile she'd always loved, before pulling her closer for a searing, deep kiss.

Minutes or hours later, she rested her forehead against his. "But I'll need your help to find all that out, Chuck. I'll need your help with all this."

"Consider it done." he replied, smiling again.

Then she decided to say something more.

"Help me, Chuck Bartowski, you're my only hope."

Chuck put a fraction more distance between them. "Sarah... this is excellent news."

She frowned, and said with a slight tinge: "What? That I can't re..."

He shook his head without letting go of her.

"No, what you said. Not why, but that you did. You never saw Star Wars until after we met."

An explosion of images raced through her mind at that.

/- _"Chuck, Beckman needs that report!" she said, even as the giggles Chuck's suggestion had caused were bubbling to the surface._

"_Probably, but we have tomorrow off, and I for one don't want to do anything even remotely related to work. Instead, we will be fighting the forces of the dark side from the comfort of this here couch. Ellie and Awesome are on that trip until tuesday, and I will take advantage of that."_

_"What," she asked with a wicked grin, "booze, loose women and party?"_

_He chuckled. "None of that. No. Star Wars. And you, Agent Walker, will be watching all three with me."_

_Chuck held up the DVD pack, and between those eyes, those incredible puppy-dog eyes and her own aversion to paperwork, she sat down on the couch without providing another answer." -\\_

Sarah sucked in a deep breath and leaned back against her seat. Chuck, worried and at the same time excited, looked at her. "Are you ok?"

She closed her eyes, taking deep, steady breaths. "Now I am... I think." Opening her eyes wide, she looked at her husband. "I just remembered something!"

Chuck reached over and squeezed her hand. "Let's get out of here. I feel the need for a _good_ cup of Coffee."

The rest of the week was both rewarding and depressing. Rewarding because Sarah recovered several more or less minor memories, but depressing because it also hammered home again just how much she'd forgotten. On Monday, while he was making pancakes for breakfast, they had started to talk, and somehow Carmicheal Industries had become the topic.

"Wait... how much?"

"Near nine-hundred million." Chuck replied, "Though most of what's left is still frozen. When you were in the shower Í talked to Beckman, and she said that she was going to suggest un-freezing at least some of it in exchange for us keeping mum about the various black eyes the Agency gave itself over the last few months. I don't know what's going to come out of it..."

"Chuck..."

He turned towards her and said: "Don't worry, Sarah. We will figure something out."

Sarah jumped to her feet from the couch. "Don't you tell me not to worry, Chuck!" she yelled, "The Agency owes this to you."

He turned, and could see that his wife was genuinely angry. And the next thing he realized was that she meant it. "Sarah..."

Chuck sighed and lightly pushed Sarah towards the couch again. "At least we have the Buy More. That's the one thing Beckman was able to do for us right away. It's not much, but it should keep us going until the company turns a profit again."

He winced at his choice of words and the unintentional pun, but Sarah considered this. There probably was much she couldn't remember, but Chuck had told her a lot over the last few days. "So we're stuck with it."

"The Buy More. God, has it been that long since..."

/- _It was a chain store like many others, but the Buy More Franchise was mostly concentrated on the West Coast, and she'd been all over but not much there. If she was to be honest, she hated going shopping, but large chain stores could be a great way to disappear into the crowd or to arrange a meet. Now however she had a different mission all together, and it was not one she looked forward to._

_Not that she didn't like to interact with a mark, but doing it with a clock ticking in the form of that NSA maniac would force her to use methods and procedures she was not all that fond of to begin with, creating a combination that left her acutely uncomfortable. But when she spotted the Nerd Herd desk in the middle of the store, she no longer had an excuse and assumed the persona she'd selected._

_Her phone had been 'broken' by a professional agency tech, and it would be perfect to make contact with this 'Chuck'. The picture from his Stanford file wasn't all that flattering, but she knew that he was highly intelligent and the quintessential nerd. And he looked it, from the pocket protector to the shirt and grey tie._

_The mark stood behind it, talking on the phone, with a smaller bearded guy next to him. Time to get to the counter, the bearded gnome in the green Buy More shirt said something. _-\\

Chuck could see how a shadow seemed to fall over her beautiful blue eyes, and he'd seen that one once before.

"Was it a big one?" he asked, but she shook her head.

"A good one."

Suddenly she sprang to her feet, crossed the room and grabbed the lapels of the shirt he was wearing. She stared into his eyes for about ten seconds and then pulled him in for a fierce kiss. He lost track of time and of what she was doing in that instant.

Minutes or hours later, Chuck noticed a set of very nice hands sneaking up his back under his shirt, and as much as he wanted her to go on...

"Sarah, wait." he said, holding her arms in place, "Are you really sure you want this?"

Her face crumpled, and Chuck was sure that she would have withdrawn her arms had he let her, and within seconds he was scrambling for something better to say.

"God, Sarah. It's not that at all. I love you, and I do [I]want[/I] you.. but.."

The brilliant smile he got in return nearly undid him there and then. "No Chuck, it's not what I want. It's what I need."

She kissed him again.

* * *

A week passed, during which Sarah spent most of the time re-discovering their relationship, in a frustratingly clumsy manner, which wasn't helped by her still only remembering scraps. Chuck, when not out getting Carmicheal Industries running again (though without much success) she did whatever she could to help speed things along.

Next Sunday morning, Chuck was still in half-sleep when his searching hand registered an empty side in the bed. He jerked wide awake, but then two things registered. First, the sheets were still warm, and secondly, the person that had made them so was sitting in the desk chair on the other side of the room, wearing it seemed his favourite N7 hoodie. She was studying him intently, and Chuck could damn near hear the gears turning in her head.

Something about the picture was surprisingly disturbing, but when what he secretly called her Agent-Face disappeared and was replaced by the one she'd worn on the beach after their kiss or in the car or... he didn't really care. Instead of thinking about it more, he looked at her.

"Staring is creepy, you know."

He was rewarded with the cutest of small giggles, but she didn't stop doing whatever she'd been doing.

With a sigh, she rose and padded over to the bed. Instead of getting back in, she knelt down at Chuck's side, her arms resting on the mattress and her fingers stepled to hold up her chin. "You know, my dad would like you."

Chuck wasn't certain if Jack Burton had really liked him the few times they'd met, but almost involuntarily his brain made him say something else.

"Your dad... strange thing to think about at a time like this."

But then something else registered. "Wait, can you remember how we met?"

Incredulously, Sarah pulled back, and Chuck knew that she was now wondering where she'd gone wrong to allow this meet-up to happen in reality. He decided not to tell her just how that had taken place, but watching her realize that she'd mentioned her father first was well worth it.

"You met him, didn't you? It's not that I remember, but somehow I [I]knew[/I] that..."

Chuck grinned. "Well, the feeling's mutual. In spite of his fiendishly con-man-y ways. He may not have been there all the time, but you turned out pretty awesome anyway."

Sarah clearly wasn't all that certain, but he decided to leave it for the moment. They were far too busy to figure out how to proceed from here to waste time on things that would, if the universe was for once going his way, be fixed in time. He knew there would be a price to pay for that, and he was unsure how Sarah would react to it once it was all over, but he was willing to do it. He knew her well enough to know that she was frustrated to no end that she only remembered odd little bits and pieces, random scraps of information here and there.

What he liked about the situation was that she'd embraced that she was his wife, that she knew she loved him and that she was, well, here.

Instead of telling her that though, he said something he'd considered even before the bomb had changed everything.

Sarah seemed to sense his need to change the subject. "So, what's next?"

"You could either get back in here," Chuck said, padding the sheets, "or we could go and get something to eat."

She threw her head back and laughed. "I..."

The moment was interrupted when all of a sudden music wafted through the appartment. Beckman's ringtone.

Sarah on the other hand had of course forgotten that part, and instead sighed in disgust when Chuck jumped out of the bed with only a short "Beckman" as an apology.

His phone lay where he'd dropped it yesterday, in a pile of clothing near the bedroom door. The General's disapproving frown stared back up at him. It was an old picture, one he'd grabbed in secret with from under the table one day at a briefing.

"Yes, General, what can I do for you?"

If Beckman detected how false his chirpy manner was, she didn't show it.

_"__Chuck, I know that you and Sarah are probably not exactly well-disposed towards the CIA right now, but could the two of you come to Langley soonest? It's not what we talked about the last time."_

"Uh...General, I don't know how we can help you in..."

Beckman must have sensed that he was about to turn her down, because what she said next was, in Chuck's considered opinion as OOC for her as Prequel-Anakin had been for Darth Vader.

_"__We have a need for the services of Carmicheal Industries, Chuck."_

He was worried at that. On one hand, this contract, if it really was one, would allow him to keep the company afloat until the Buy More started turning a profit again, yet at the same time the CIA was at least partially responsible for everything that had happened in his life over the last five years. He glanced at the bedroom door and couldn't stifle a grin. Good as well as bad. Besides, there was something unusually sincere in the General's voice.

"I can't speak for Sarah, but I'll try to get there tomorrow."

Greetings were exchanged and Chuck ended the call.

"Can't speak for me why?"

Normally he loved is wife's awesome mad Ninja skills, but right now he almost jumped out of his own skin.

Sarah was standing in the doorway, and it was obvious that she'd heard most of his end of the conversation.

"She wants us in Langley. Something about a gig she wants us to do."

Sarah frowned, but Chuck was quick to reassure her. "Trust me, honey. If it's anything like the old days, I'll do an about face quicker than the Falcon on the Kessel run."

"Are you certain?"

"Damn right I am, Sarah. I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and if that means going back to the Agency for this job then that's the way it has to be."

Sarah was struck again by how big a heart Chuck had. He had been willing to give up everything for her, he'd told her that, but now was the first time since The Beach that she fully, totally and completely believed that.

Yet at the same time there was still an element of uncertainty in her own mind. The CIA had been her life for so long, it was hard to imagine anything else, and she knew that she'd been very good at her job.

She loved Chuck, and she wanted to grow old at his side, yet at the same time the job, the life, her old life were calling her, and the sound was alluring.

"Oh Chuck," she said, trying not to show on her face what she felt, "I love you too. I'll come with you. If what you've told me is anything to go by you're far too accident-prone to go there without me."

She hoped that he wouldn't find out just yet that she was going there for reasons not the same as his own.

"By the way," she added with true humour in her voice, "you do know that a parsec is a unit of distance, not time? And Chuck, Iron Eagle? For Beckman? Really?"

"Hey, it's an 80s classic!"

tbc

**AN: If the selection of things Sarah remembers seems random, that's fully intentional. I want to show that for now she remembers bits and pieces and has now control at all over it. It's all a bit clunky, but also my first foray into this particular fandom.**

**This chapter is shorter than I had intended, but having them fly to Langley in this one felt too rushed when I wrote it, so that sequence has been cut.**


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: I have, of course, not been inside the CIA ever. I have, however been inside countless Government buildings over here and have seen pictures of ones in the United States. This one is way more plot-centred.**

**Disclaimer 1: Dear NSA, I am writing a piece of fiction. I have no terrorist intentions against your country or my own. Or any other for that matter. When I looked up the CIA HQ on Google maps, I was merely curious where in relative position to Washington DC it was located.**

**Disclaimer 2: Still don't own em. **

**Disclaimer 3: I'm going to try and update this weekly. Work is very demanding, and I am also working on a Stargate SG-1 co-writing project.**

* * *

**Chapter Two**

When they had been picked up at Dulles and driven halfway across the boondogs of Northern Virginia, Sarah had at first been willing to believe that they'd been had, and that the CIA had something awful planned for them. Paradoxically, Chuck knew Beckman far better than she did, even though she knew of her for longer, and he was perfectly fine with what had happened.

Because of that, and because she knew that they had work of some form to do, so she decided that working out her own issues with the CIA was not going to be a priority at the moment. And yet... she felt as if she was about to face some of that anyway.

Chuck's sleepy "Where are we?" broke her out of her reverie, and she smiled at how he managed to fall asleep in the strangest circumstances. She knew from what he'd told her that this was a relatively recent trait, one that had to do with too many nights spent on missions, and she hated it that she didn't know things like that about her husband. It strengthened her resolve to find a way past this, any way past this.

But one thing she did know about him was that he would get a kick out of their location. Therefore she smiled when she answered.

"Outside Mount Weather, Viriginia."

Instantly, Chuck was wide awake, and his "This is awesomely cool" face was out in full force. She knew... no, she _remembered_ that Chuck adored underground installations such as this one, and sure enough, he looked at everything he could see through the windows, even though he'd probably seen pictures of the surface area dozens of times on the Internet.

The car stopped, and when she saw General Beckman and someone she now knew as George Sherman, new CIA director and according to Chuck's second hand information that had to have come from the General, a complete pain in the posterior. She didn't really consider him as her boss. For one, she wasn't really agency any more, however much a part of her resented the universe for it, and secondly, she still in some ways considered Graham to be her boss.

The way Chuck and Sarah were greeted by the two was one more indication that Chuck was right. Beckman showed not the slightest indication that the Bartowskis were more to her than a team of Agents, while Sherman's grin was likely the broadest in the history of CIA directors. It was of course something that made him suspicious. Both he and Beckman had an agenda and wanted their own results out of this trip, but at least the General didn't look like she was trying to hide it.

"Chuck, Sarah, welcome to Mount Weather." she said by way of a greeting, "I thank you that you decided to meet me and Director Sherman at such short notice."

Sherman only dispensed curt nods. "Mrs. Bartowski, Mr... Bartowski, welcome."

He totally missed the look of pure venom shot at him by Beckman when she registered how he'd talked to Chuck. Not only was it how he likely felt over the man who had been at the heart of the Intersect disaster and still carried a version of it in his head, but also completely at odds with his public persona as a complete technocrat who never let personal feelings get in the way.

Now that he'd done so, she knew that he had an agenda even more removed from the official line than usual for the CIA. Of course he hated the idea that he'd been ordered by the White House to accept Beckman's suggestions on calling in civilians on this, but unlike him, Beckman knew those parts of the whole affair the CIA didn't need to know about yet.

Sarah of course knew none of this, and instead followed them all to the elevator that took them down into those parts of the facility that were kept out of the public eye even more than usual.

When the doors of the elevator dinged open, they were faced with a grey metal door and a security checkpoint. Sherman turned and they finally got some information.

"What is beyond those doors is beyond top secret. It's so secret that none of this was ever integrated into the Intersect, as it originally started as a failsafe in case the primary project did not work out as intended. Which it _clearly_ has."

He took a deep breath.

"The Tied in Research and Operations Network is in essence an Intersect as well, but one that's immobile and by design unable to be uploaded towards any unqualified civilian."

He glanced at Chuck clearly indicating who he blamed for that, but the only thing he got in reply was the same face Chuck had used for years towards irate customers, the one that said 'Up yours' to those who knew him and nothing at all but polite attentiveness to those who didn't. His wife still knew him well enough, and her instincts were agreeing with him, even though she took care not to show it.

"We still use images to encode the information, but the form of encryption is different in ways that our tech geeks can explain better than me. The core of it is that here we do only process data that is sent in by all the the CIA's assets, and access to this information is provided at Langley via a secure satellite connection and in emergencies, a direct landine that we put in during the 1990s."

Chuck was burning with questions. "But if this is supposed to replace the Intersect, how do you co-ordinate with the NSA?"

"I was getting to that, _Mr._ Bartowski." Sherman said, his voice dripping with acid, "The NSA has a similar facility."

"At Fort Meade."

Sarah was amazed to see stuck-up General Beckman break protocol and interrupt another senior member of the DNI like this. She really had changed...

"The NSA," Sherman continued, "has the same means of accessing this information, even though I hear they are trying to get funding for a high-capacity fibre-optic landline to be put in as part of the Military Communications upgrades that were pushed through Congress last month."

Dirty glances were exchanged between him and Beckman, but he had a show to run.

"The computers and our analysts sort through the information, generally doing what the Intersect did, and when they find something they communicate it to the Agencies concerned. This is where you come in."

"There has been a false positive." Beckman said, "And that one cost us the live of our most important asset in Bejing. Since we fear it's a mole, the White House has authorized us contracting this out to Carmicheal Industries."

Sherman showed his unhappiness with these arrangements. "I was against this, but since the both of you are still cleared, I was overruled. There will be a more detailed briefing later. You better not screw this up, Mr. Bartowski."

He turned and was about to lead them through the doors when Sarah saw the grin she loved so much on Chuck's face.

"Wait a minute. You're telling me that you called the Intersect replacement... you called it TRON?"

* * *

Chuck decided that it lived up to the name the moment he stepped through the doors. Sherman was unwilling to divulge any more information except that this space had once been intended to house a nuclear reactor before that part of the project was scrapped in the late 50s, so he was forced to make his own picture.

Except for six lines of terminals, all but four not in use, the entirety of the space was filled up by the biggest server farm he'd seen in his life. Somewhere in his subconscious, his inner Nerd-Herder commented on the power requirements for a setup like this, but up front, Chuck was far too busy trying not to drool.

"As you can see, at this moment this facility is in stand-down. The CIA and the NSA can operate with their local satellite servers for a while, but we need this up and running soon. I hope Carmicheal Industries is up to it."

That Sherman hoped it for them wasn't said, but Chuck and Sarah heard it anyway. If they screwed this up, the company was done. Even though neither Sherman nor Beckman would do anything officially, they could kiss getting at least some of their assets back goodbye and no one 'in the know' formally or informally would hire them again.

'No pressure.' Chuck thought and concentrated on what Sherman was saying.

"The entire TRON system relies on the reports to the CIA and NSA local servers being accurate and genuine. Somehow someone managed to sneak in a false positive."

"Can you give us any more details on that?" Sarah asked, and Sherman was obviously uncomfortable. He hesitated, but then looked at Beckman who was glaring at him the way she had at Chuck and Morgan when they'd woken her up with Shaw's fake fight.

Clearly, the two of them had 'discussed' this before, and Sherman had lost the argument.

"Two weeks ago, the CIA's Russian desk sent out a memo that told us that a 'highly placed source', meaning TRON's analysis parts, had disclosed that a highly placed Resort Director of the FSB was willing to defect on very short notice to the United States. It also indicated that this man had highly sensitive and time critical information about certain members of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces and several Tank Divisions in European Russia had sounded out various disenchanted FSB elements about a potential military coup. As it turned out when we sent in a team to recover that man, it was a cleverly engineered trap. The FSB was waiting for them, thinking it was an attempt by the Russian mob and Chinese intelligence to assassinate that resort director. With... predictable results."

Chuck and Sarah swallowed. In their time they'd both had their fair share of missions go bad, but this was beyond the pale.

"We only realized the thing had gone bad on our end when we received genuine and verifiable reports five days ago that the Russians had started a massive crackdown on the mob and on their entanglements with the Chinese."

"Started of course," Chuck interrupted, "at the insistence of the Resort Director?"

Sherman nodded. He obviously hated having to admit that the amateur security risk he saw Chuck as was right, but no one had ever said that he wasn't smart.

"Yes, that was what gave us the final tip off. Since the leak could only have come from the inside, we knew that none of our own safeguards could be trusted, so the General here," Sherman motioned at Beckman, "suggested to the President that we should contract this out, and that she had a certain someone in mind. It was accepted under the proviso that you will not get any look at actual intel data if it can be prevented."

He had said the last sentence with a voice that was as hard as titanium, and the Bartowskis both just nodded, neither having much reason for wanting to see the data just yet.

"Have you managed to track down just where the fake info was inserted?"

Sherman shook his head. "No, except that the source that was supposed to have originated the information didn't do it. We looked at him and his surroundings, and he's been cleared, 49b included.

Chuck glanced at Sarah at that, and she winced the way she had a couple of times since the beach, and he knew that she remembered the same thing as he did at those words.

"So what is it that you want Carmicheal Industries to do, Director Sherman?" he asked.

"What we want," Beckman answered, "is for you to find out how and if you can, why that false positive was inserted. The how and why is handled in-house."

He appreciated it, and he was certain Sarah did as well. That sort of spy work was something they no longer wanted to do. CI was about security consulting, both cyber and real world, along with the sort of desk-bound counter-intelligence work that came with it... at least until they expanded the reach. It was something he'd kept stashed away in his mind for the last year, but he knew it wouldn't happen until the thing with Sarah's memory had resolved and CI stood on a firmer footing. Plain and simple, they just couldn't afford it right now.

"This mess started two weeks ago and you already know this much?" Sarah asked, and she was visibly impressed.

Sherman nodded. Here at last was the opportunity to get the ball rolling. "Yes. Previously it would have gone faster, but nowadays the quality of the Agency has declined in some areas."

Chuck, already deep in thought about how he'd do all this missed the dig, but both Sarah and General Beckman didn't. For Sarah it was one more thing that added to her uncertainty in regards to the CIA, but for Beckman it set off alarm bells. She had doubted that Sherman would make a move quite this quickly, and this blatantly, but the man was a smug bastard convinced of his own superiority in addition to anything else now that he'd managed to get the object of his desire into his own little playing field.

But at the moment he'd done nothing wrong or overt, and as she watched him answer Chuck and Sarah's questions, she knew that she would have to watch out. But for all the flaws the man had, he was loyal to the Agency and tried his level best to do his job well. The CIA had had worse directors over the years, and while he couldn't really replace Graham.

Her two former... wayward charges, for lack of a better word, worked together as if nothing had happened. Sarah had shaken off whatever Sherman's stupid line had given her, and Beckman could see that the both of them were already sifting the CIA Director for information in a way that made it clear that they had done this for years. Between the times when they had driven her up the wall with their antics or when they had gone plane AWOL, those had been great times, and in some ways she missed them, though of course Chuck and Sarah might think differently.

**tbc**

**AN: And here we have the beginning of the plot. These chapters will vary in length, but I am aiming for minimum ~ 2.5k words apiece.**


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: Sorry for the delay. Insert the standard excuses here, but once a week just can't be done with my schedule...**

**Dislcaimer: Still don't own them.**

Chapter Three

Chuck had decided to let out his inner geek. He knew that Sarah liked it... _'used to like it' _he reminded himself bitterly, and it allowed him to relax far better. It was something he'd missed when working for the CIA. Therefore, he was dressed in his favourite TRON fan shirt and listening to a best of_ Rush_ compilation as he filed through input protocols.

"Found anything?"

Sarah had managed to sneak up on him and was now standing beside the workstation he used. She looked down at him with an inquiring smile and placed one of her hands on his right shoulder.

"Nada, zip, zilch. The CIA alone has like ten-thousand inputs a day, and of those all but maybe six or seven are complete junk. But you know that."

Chuck sighed. "The problem isn't so much the data itself but more that there's so damn much of it. I feel like looking for a needle in a haystack, but without a magnet. You?"

She shook her head. "About as much. But what do you expect, it's only been what?" she glanced at her watch, "three hours since we arrived. This won't go as quick as the Director wants it to."

Sarah was sifting through the files of everyone who had access to the system here at Mount Weather, but even without the background checks the stack of hard copy files was higher than _she_ was standing up.

"True. But if the 'leak' is here, then it has to have been someone in that stack." Chuck said, pointing at the table groaning under it's evenly distributed weight.

"But damn me if I know how he did it." he continued, "because on the surface those security measures are harder to get into from this end than the second Death Star. Six pass-word checks, half a dozen verification tests and you have to manually sign on actual paper protocols no less than twice to even get this far."

"So the system is fool-proof?" Sarah asked out of concern for the nation's secrets.

Her husband shook his head.

"Naa. There is no such thing as a fool-proof system or a tech that can't be messed with. If it's in here, I'll find it."

Chuck took the hand on his shoulder in his own and kissed it to reassure her.

The warmth that seeped into every corner of her being was something she'd...no. She would not miss this, because she would stand by the decision she'd made an hour earlier. It killed her that she couldn't tell Chuck about it yet, but down here the walls had ears.

* * *

_She needed a break. Sifting through evidence like this was something she enjoyed under other circumstances, but the sheer number of files and their thickness was daunting to say the least. With instincts that had yet to fail her, she sought out and found the candy/soda machine that the Agency seemed to have everywhere. _

_Selecting a Diet Coke, and she was exhilarated to remember that Chuck hated Diet Coke, she turned and nearly jumped out of her shoes when another spy was standing at the nearby doorway, looking at her._

"_Sarah Walker, right? I heard about you."_

_For some reason she didn't correct the name, but instead inspected the other man from head to toe, and for some reason the first thing she thought was that he reminded her of Bryce. But... something was odd here. Instinct told her that this was no chance encounter, nor was the nonchalante way the man was leaning there, daring her to object._

_Then it snapped. Of course! This was exactly the way she had first encountered the man who had later gone on to steal the Intersect. _

_But why.._

_The thought was cut off._

"_I couldn't believe it when I heard that you had left the Agency and gotten hitched. I mean, someone who has done so much to defend this country giving it all up for the white picket fence with a random geek?"_

_Sarah's antennae twitched again. If this was what she thought it was, Sherman was far more obvious about his motives than she'd ever thought he'd be._

"_What's it to you?" she asked, raising an eyebrow in the fashion Chuck found so irressistible._

"_Oh, nothing," the man replied as he moved away from the doorway, "it's just you could do a lot more at the Agency."_

_He disappeared, leaving a Sarah behind that was slowly beginning to boil with anger. Sherman had to believe she was back to how she'd been five years ago, because back then that would have been all she'd needed, hell, it had been twice when she'd expressed a desire to end her CIA career. _

_She was surprised to notice that she hated being manipulated like that, and she knew that it was one of the things that had made her quit in the first place. And then there had been Chuck..._

_As she thought about what she had considered doing in the privacy of her own mind... what that would have done to him... it sickened her that she had ever even considered it. Sarah, be her last name Walker or Bartowski, didn't back down when the going got tough, especially when it came to rebuilding the live she'd had with the man she loved._

_The clumsy way he'd gone about it made her suspect that maybe it hadn't been Sherman after all. Her instincts told her that there was something else going on here, and she would do her damned best to find out what it was. Until she had a chance to talk to Chuck privately, she would have to play the uncertainty up, and she hoped he realized that it was only an act. Then, she might not remember most of the last five years, but she knew that he knew her better than anyone else, herself included._

_And with no more than that, far easier and with less pain than she could have imagined, the teeny, tiny bit of the old Sarah Walker that had crept back in since The Beach disappeared again. Now she truly and completely Sarah Bartowski, former CIA agent and lacking her memories._

_According to her growling stomach, she was still starving too._

* * *

Sarah shook the memory away.

"So anyway," Chuck said without realizing she hadn't listened to him for at least a minute, "even when you're in, getting something into circulation from this end is... disturbingly difficult."

She frowned. That put a new spin on things. Somehow she had expected that once you were past the outer shell, it was laughably difficult for someone in the know to manipulate things. The Agency had worked that way since she was seventeen.

"How so?"

"Well, there's more safeguards there than any Bond villain's lair. Once you're in, there's three places for the CIA and NSA parts of the system, and I'd bet my favourite Han Solo action figure that there's a dozen places that check everything from your location to the kind of software your system uses. In short, this is as near to fool-proof as it's possible to make. That dummy account they gave me doesn't go into the nuts and bolts of the code..."

Sarah heard the qualifier he hadn't actually used.

"This, as in this particular facility?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"It makes sense," Sarah said while she considered what he'd said, "there's maybe half a dozen legitimate techs here at any one time that could get in, so it's far too risky for any spy to try it this openly. I take it a backdoor in the code could have been written in at the start when the system was built?"

"I knew there is a reason why I love you." Chuck said with a smirk, and turned away before he saw the (fake) uneasiness on her face. She mentally asked for his forgiveness. "There better be, Chuck." was what she actually said aloud.

"But even then," he replied, already diving back in, "you'd have to be physically present."

Then what he'd been going towards clicked for Sarah as well. "Which means the backdoor is useless as this facility has no connection to the outside except to Langley for the CIA and Fort Meade for the NSA?"

"Precisely." he said, doing an endearingly bad impression of the Blofeld on a cheap plastic swivel chair. All that was needed was a white toy cat for him to stroke.

Sarah couldn't help the radiant (to Chuck) smile that broke out on her face.

"I love you." she said, bent down and kissed him.

* * *

Somewhere in California, the CEO of the Infinity Group was tentatively optimistic. Her plans so far had been going well by all accounts. Manipulating the CIA into contracting Carmicheal Industries had been easier than expected, her mole had orders to lay low and do nothing until further notice.

She pushed her glasses back into position with her middle finger and proceeded to start her usual routine she did on every time entering her office.

First thing was to check the tampering alarms on the door, the windows and the safe, both electronic and lower-tech, the latter in form of a hair glued so that it would fall off if someone opened a window. Next she re-enabled the alarms on the windows without having a glance to spare for the Northern California countryside, before calling to the security office downstairs. It was a lengthy act, but she didn't leave her office all that often during a normal work day, modern communications saw to that.

Then she did what she never told anyone about.

On her desk stood a lock box double the size of a shoe box, with a combination lock on it. It used the co-ordinates of her first High-School, but it was merely the first of several security measures, as it was followed by a bio-metric lock that used her fingerprints and voice ID. This was followed by an old-fashioned lock that needed a key.

And even if one got inside, there was still the problem of what to do with the thing inside. Outwardly it looked like an external Hard Drive like you could buy in any half-competent electronics store, even the Burbank Buymore, but it was far from it. To the CEO, it was both the future of the company and revenge.

As always when she opened the box, she stared at it, before glancing at the two pictures on her desk.

"Ma'am?"

"Come in, Kessler."

The CEO sighed and closer the box again. Her plan for revenge was an old one, and only in the last few weeks had the last pieces of the puzzle fallen into place. Kessler was Infinity's Chief of Intelligence, at least to those who knew what the company she'd built over the last ten years was all about, and he didn't like the rush job he'd had to put on this mission.

"Is everything ready, Kessler?"

He nodded. "Yes, Ma'am. Last report from our mole, the Carmicheal operatives targeted have been allowed into the facility."

"Have they found our... trace yet?"

Kessler shrugged. "There's no way to tell, Ma'am. You yourself..."

"I know." she said, and sighed. "The spy world can be very frustrating. But we have to get this plan to work. Is Phase Two in place?"

"Again, the last report indicated that it was and that contact had been made, but nothing beyond that."

The CEO leaned back in her chair and came to a decision quickly. "We have to proceed on the assumption that everything worked. Phase Three needs to be in place when we re-activate the mole, and things have gone to plan."

"Yes, Ma'am." Kessler didn't share the CEO's motivations for this whole idea, but he wasn't a mercenary like the muscle working for the company or one of it's subsidiaries. He had his own debts to settle with the Central Intelligence Agency, and so had a great many others, including most of the Executive Board that, outwardly at least, ran the Infinity Group. And yet, he couldn't help but wonder if risking the only useful asset that had remained when the opposition had cleared Ring and Fulcrum spies out of their ranks. What bugged him also was that Phase Three depended on so many things going exactly right during it's implementation that it made

Still, letting this opportunity go to waste went against his training and instincts as a spy. Therefore he decided to make a suggestion.

"Ma'am, perhaps there is a way how we can ensure that Phase Three is less... complicated."

The CEO tilted a head in a way that meant 'Go on, but it better be good'.

"Well," Kessler said, "what if we let the Agency bring the target to us? That way we still get what we need, and at much less risk to our own people and to the company."

"How would this be accomplished?"

Kessler outlined his idea for several minutes, even drawing a crude map of the area onto a piece of paper, and by the time he'd finished, the CEO was both impressed, though she took care not to show it, and annoyed at her Chief of Ops.

"Why hasn't it been done like this in the first place?"

Sensing her anger, Kessler decided to try the truth for once.

"I suggested it to Mr. Hearst, but he... dismissed it."

To call what had nearly become a full-blown fistfight a dismissal was an understatement that Kessler normally wouldn't have used, but he didn't want to look as if he was trying to get Hearst's responsibilities folded into his own. Especially when that was exactly what he was trying to do.

"I see. You may leave now."

As she called Hearst into her office, she couldn't see the smile on Kessler's face.

**tbc**

**AN: The reason why I nipped the plotline with "Sarah might go back" in the bud was because while I didn't get much writing done, I thought about all this a lot and decided that it was too OOC for Sarah in this situation. Sarah in the penultimate episode may have considered going back, but Sarah how I envision her post-finale won't. For one, she doesn't strike me as a woman who backs down from any sort of challenge, especially when it means rebuilding a life with Chuck whom she truly and deeply loves. Secondly, the way I read her, she wasn't all that happy at the CIA even before she met Chuck.**

**It was stupid to put it in, especially on a whim, but now that it's there, I can develop Sherman more as a character, and she was going to eventually come to that conclusion anyway.**

**My call, but when you hate it, please let me no in friendly(ish) terms through a review. Those fuel me and motivate me to write.**

**As for the Infinity Group, I like shows/movies/games and so on where we as the audience know more than the characters.**


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: Not mine, yadda, yadda, yadda.**

**Chapter IV**

Eight hours after they had arrived, Director Sherman watched Sarah Wa... Bartowski watch her husband work through a window in the doors. She was half-bent over, her chin resting on his shoulders, as he explained some of his findings to her. It was too damn obvious that whatever they had together was more real than he had been lead to believe. There was a good chance that the damnable Beckman was right, but he wasn't going to give up easy. He needed Walker back at the Agency. Recent reverses, both public and not, had made it clear that the form of team she was originally to have formed after Bartowski had uploaded the second Intersect was needed.

Threats those two had no idea about where emerging, and even though none of them was as dangerous as the Ring had been, yet, Sherman believed that it might get that bad.

He was even willing to offer Bartowski a job in the team. As much as he hated to admit it, even without the Intersect, he was a capable analyst. Getting Walker back into the Agency was worth any price, even her continuing to play happy families with the geek.

And even if that failed, he still had the ultimate trump card, and one that Walker wouldn't be able to resist.

At the moment though he needed them and their little company right where they were. Plans or not, there was the matter of a mole in a supposedly secure communications and intelligence gathering system, and much to his shame, his own investigations had turned up less than nothing.

It was then that Bartowski visibly tensed and indicated something on the screen, and seconds later, Sherman found himself barrelling back into the room.

"What is it, Bartowski?"

Chuck flinched, but turned in his chair.

"I think I know how the fake data was implanted."

"Could you tell me?"

Impatience wasn't a virtue for the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, but he had a job to do.

"That might take a while..."

"Try me."

The ice in his voice was unmistakable.

"Mount Weather is a Government facility, and even if it weren't, the technology in here belongs to you guys. You do things by the book, and because you do, you regularly shut parts of the system down for maintenance."

He paused for effect, but the look on Sarah's face made it clear that this might not be the best move. She may not know Sherman all that well, or at all, but she was very familiar with the type, and Chuck was once again reminded of how lucky they'd been with Diane Beckman.

"Regular being the key-word here. If it was my system, we'd do this irregularly, and at changing times. You seem to do it every Sunday to Monday for two hours between ten and midnight."

Sherman realized where he was going, and it was obvious that he didn't like to give Chuck due credit.

"So you're saying that this was when the false data was imprinted?"

"Partially. What this guy did, and let me say, it's an awesomely sneaky way to do it, is putting it in after the maintenance and security checks were done and signed off on."

Sherman frowned.

"Can you prove that?"

"No, but there's enough to get a lead. I know that's how he must have done it because you seem to be using a modified Banshee Linux, and he knows enough about the system to deactivate file verification. Hell, I do know enough to do this. It's not that hard."

"What he means is," Sarah continued for him, "that because it is so easy, the bad guy left behind something else."

She stepped aside to let Sherman look at the screen.

What was displayed there was access log for the system and the file that had been changed, and indeed, it correlated with the end of the maintenance period. Sherman had at first resisted Beckman's 'request' that CI be given access to really everything, those logs included, but now he was forced to eat his words, and he hated it.

"It's a beginner's mistake, really. Looking at the timestamps is... pretty basic."

Sherman was already busy writing down some information, so he missed the look of affectionate exasperation and, most of all, love on Sarah's face, and had he seen it, the following events could have gone differently.

But he hadn't, so instead he just gave them a curt nod before leaving the room to make a few phone calls.

At least that was what he tried, Sarah's next sentence stopped him cold.

"He's not the only mole you have."

Sherman turned on his heels.

"Why is that, Agent?"

Sarah ignored the 'Agent'.

"Because, Director, someone has to have shielded him a few years back. Chuck tells me the security sweep and the roundup of Fulcrum and later Ring Agents within the CIA and NSA was pretty thorough, and if he survived it..."

When she saw that Sherman was about to object, she glanced at Chuck, before turning back.

"My point is that one or two outlying Ring or Fulcrum Cells could have survived, because they were too damn small or insignificant, but something like this requires the specific backing of someone on the inside."

"Then why did they take so long to act?"

Sherman had a pretty good idea why, but he wanted to know if Bartowski did. Sarah saw, registered and faced the challenge.

"We do. Chuck thinks that they weren't sure how far we," Sarah circled her fingers, making it clear she meant the CIA/NSA "had penetrated the FulcrumslashRing network, and by the time they did there was nothing but keeping their heads down and hoping to not get noticed."

"If I were them," Chuck interjected, "I'd have contacted three or four of my best spies with some emergency signal and then kept low until we'd started focussing on Volkov. Whatever front they have must be freakishly good, because I have no idea what it could be. When we rolled up the last Ring operations we got everything that was on the list."

"Which is the problem, Chuck."

Sarah frowned, completely ignoring anything and anyone else in the room.

"It has to be something disturbingly large and it has to have been well-established. It takes time to establish this sort of thing. How long were Fulcrum and the Ring active?"

"At least since the early '90s." Chuck supplied before Sherman had a chance to.

"Their new front has to exist at least that long."

Sherman frowned. "So what you're saying is that there is a Fulcrum or Ring remnant that is still active and has the resources to maintain a mole inside the NSA and CIA?"

"What I find disturbing is that they had the patience to lay low until now. I don't like the timing of this at all."

Chuck was deep in thought, looking at his own feet with a frown, so he missed the quick look of guilt that raced across Sherman's face before he got it back under control. Sarah was puzzled, and decided to push things.

"How come?"

"Don't get this wrong honey, but announcing the existence of this mole to every security organ and spy in the country in a way that has basically forced the General to call us in at a time when you aren't exactly in top condition?" Chuck said with an apologetic smile. Sarah squeezed his shoulders with her hand to tell him that she didn't mind.

"You're right of course. And of course there's what happened at the vending machine earlier."

Sherman was worried when he saw the sweet smile she wore on her face that was accompanied by a steely gaze that made him glad that looks couldn't kill.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Well I'm sure, Director, that such a blunt and frankly brazen attempt to re-recruit me for the Agency couldn't have come from, say, your own office. You know how pointless it would be."

He was not yet prepared to give up on that, but decided to yield for the moment. Besides, Carmicheal Industries had proven to be surprisingly useful, he grudgingly admitted to himself, and he was not yet prepared to let that resource go.

"Of course, Mrs. Bartowski."

Sherman's suave and soothing tone of voice was one he'd used on scores of Senators on the Intelligence Oversight Committee, yet the message 'This isn't over' was passed between all three of them, but at the same time a temporary truce was reached, as Sherman was most of all a professional, as, he was surprised to notice, were both Bartowskis.

There was work to be done.

"So, what do we do now?" Chuck asked, "I don't see what we could short of going through the entrance logs for the facility and compare times."

"I'll have people..." Sherman paused, considering the circumstances coldly and objectively, "no, I will have them brought down by someone I trust and then _you_ will look through them."

He gave thin smile. "I begin to see the wisdom behind why General Beckman insisted that you be brought in. You're probably the least likely set of spies to be compromised by anyone, even ignoring all that has happened."

* * *

In the end, events made the work they did over the next three hours redundant. The mole had received his orders no more than an hour ago via the emergency backup, and he was worried by what he'd been told to do, but like the other former Fulcrum spies that still roamed free, he was too dependent on the good-will of his handlers to not act.

Both at Langley and Fort Meade it had been made impossible to smuggle in explosives with acceptable risk after Graham had been killed in the 2nd Intersect room, so complete destruction of the room he had been told to target was impossible to achieve. Instead, he opted for a less direct approach. He knew that the opposition would manage to repair it soon, but when he had pointed that out to his handler, he had been told that a delay was more than enough.

He didn't like that either, so he decided to activate his failesafe before heading into work for the last time. He knew that he wouldn't be able to return there, as it was unavoidable that he used his security codes to get in. Objectively, he considered his chances of living for more than another four or five hours at best fifty-fifty, but he hated the CIA enough and was too loyal to his employers, even the true employers he wasn't supposed to know about to care much. His worries were about the chance that he was discovered before he got in.

But he wouldn't have had to worry. The sentry at the door was easily subdued without knowing who it was, and the body was lowered to the ground without making any sounds.

The room was not that much different from the old Intersect room on the surface, except that of course there were no monitor panels to show images in the white walls, and the centre-piece was a chair that, at first glance looked like a cross between a Dentist's chair and a virtual reality simulator. A computer terminal on a small, raised platform was the access point to the systems, and that was where the mole headed.

He inserted a device that looked like an ordinary USB memory stick into the appropriate slot and ran the software contained on it. It was decidedly non-standard, but it had only one thing to do. It spooled up the battery also contained in the device, and together with the power provided by the building and the systems in the room, it sent a power surge about three hundred times of what the curcuits were designed for through the room and especially the chair.

It was no surprise that the electronics literally melted, and by the time the smoke triggered the fire alarms, the mole had already left the room and was racing away to the emergency escape route he had scouted on his first week of starting his cover job.

But when he opened the hatch, the last thing he ever felt was the muzzle of a silenced gun against his neck.

**tbc**

**AN: Sorry about the delay and relative shortness. Anyhow, if one of you were willing to act as a beta, I'd be obliged.**


End file.
